This interpretive review examines Patricia Hughes-Fuller's article "'Am I Canadian?': Hockey as 'National' Culture," which investigates the deep connection between hockey and Canadian national identity. The review traces Fuller's argument that hockey functions not merely as a sport but as a cultural symbol distinguishing Canada from the United States. Drawing on media examples — including the documentary Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us, the television series Power Play, and the American film Slapshot — Fuller demonstrates how hockey reinforces distinctly Canadian values such as community, freedom, and unity. The review also incorporates supporting perspectives from Gruneau and Whitson's Hockey Night in Canada to reinforce the sport's central role in defining Canadian nationhood.
In her article "'Am I Canadian?': Hockey as 'National' Culture," Patricia Hughes-Fuller explores the connection between the sport of hockey and Canadian national identity. Fuller accomplishes this exploration by comparing media images of hockey in Canada and the United States in order to determine what effects the globalization of hockey will have on Canada's perception of the national sport. At one point, Fuller asks, "Are Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and baseball perceived as less American simply because these highly visible cultural symbols are now consumed globally?" Her answer to the self-posed question — "I suspect most of us would agree that they are not" — suggests that Canadians will continue to see hockey as a symbol of their national identity no matter how far the sport is exported (35).
While Fuller's speculation on the future of hockey reflects a compassionate view of the country and the sport, this topic is not her main purpose throughout the article. Instead, Fuller's goal is to explore whether hockey holds great cultural importance in Canada and why that is so. Because it highlights the differences between Americans and Canadians — especially through media — and because it exemplifies Canadian values, Fuller argues that the sport is, indeed, integral to the nation's national identity.
Both Canadians and Americans have become painfully aware that many observers see the two nations as sharing similar cultures and heritages, although Fuller points out that this is most definitely not the case. While Americans are often seen as power-hungry know-it-alls who tend to idealize Canada as a "little America," Canadians view the two countries as coming from completely different cultural traditions. Fuller uses Canadian media to strengthen the argument that hockey highlights these differences.
She describes a Canadian television show called Power Play that was "obviously created with an eye to the American audience" because it "makes fun of cultural clichés on both sides of the border" (29). Although the show poked at both American and Canadian audiences, Fuller suggests that it portrayed "Canadians' pragmatic, localized, episodic, and fluid sense of themselves" and their need for an "absolute, forceful, and mystified [American] Other for useful comparison" (29). Thus, in a television show ostensibly about hockey, far more than hockey is discussed. The national identity of Canadians and their frustration at being considered American are large components of the program. Through the conduit of media, hockey becomes the vehicle by which these important issues are brought to the surface for discussion among the continent's audiences.
Continuing to use media to illustrate the importance of hockey in highlighting the differences between Canadian and American national identities, Fuller introduces the article with a description of the NFB documentary Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us, which is "premised on the notion that we learn to skate almost before we learn to walk" (26). According to Fuller, the film personifies ice rinks almost by giving them souls, in a way comparable to Moby Dick's assertion that "the sea has character," while also showing how hockey across Canada has served to bring people of diverse backgrounds together as something uniquely Canadian (26).
"Shinny vs. Slapshot as cultural opposites"
"Shinny's rules as expressions of Canadian values"
While some contend that Canada's hockey myth is just that — arguing that the sport is of no more importance than American baseball — Fuller's article argues otherwise. Hockey is not just a sport in Canada, but the agent by which Canadians have been able to distinguish themselves from Americans and defend their own cultural values. Through a survey of media, Fuller suggests that hockey is the prime venue through which to observe how Canadians and Americans differ. American hockey media describes the sport as violent and commercial, while Canadian hockey media presents it as the forger of community and unity and the defender of Canadian values. Similarly, Fuller's use of media to demonstrate that hockey symbolizes Canadian values confirms its importance to Canada as a symbol of national identity.
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